Correlation between hospital finances and quality and safety of patient care.

School of Public Health, State University of New York, University at Albany, Albany, NY, United States of America.

2

Institute for Health and the Environment, State University of New York, University at Albany, Albany, NY, United States of America.

3

Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Albany, NY, United States of America.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Hospitals under financial pressure may struggle to maintain quality and patient safety and have worse patient outcomes relative to well-resourced hospitals. Poor predictive validity may explain why previous studies on the association between finances and quality/safety have been equivocal. This manuscript employs principal component analysis to produce robust measures of both financial status and quality/safety of care, to assess our a priori hypothesis: hospital financial performance is associated with the provision of quality care, as measured by quality and safety processes, patient outcomes, and patient centered care.